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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

35 Pounds

"Wait, I have to pack ALL the stuff I want to bring for an entire year into that? No way!" was my initial reaction when Brian showed me the carry-on size bags at R.E.I that he thought we should buy for the trip. I immediately started mourning the year-long loss of my 40 pairs of shoes. Those black pumps I had recently worn to a party suddenly seemed much cuter than when I had angrily kicked them off at the end of the night vowing to never wear them again. We travel quite a bit and I have gotten very good at packing light, but when you're going to be on the road for an entire year it's daunting to think about only having one suitcase. Following the initial shock and several trips to R.E.I, we bought one bag, took it home for a test pack and were pleasantly surprised to see that we would be able to to fit, albeit tightly, our gear and clothing in the bag.

After our first packing test, I actually began to look forward to packing up all of the now superfluous items in our apartment and sending them off to the storage space. Every time I move apartments it feels great to get rid of all the things I bought but don't really need. And I was going to be able to get rid of all of it for an entire year! No more paper shredder, no more exercise weights, no more shoes I never wear. Out of sight and out of mind for the next year; a new environment for our new experience.

So how do you pack for an entire year? Well I think the answer is that it depends on what type of trip you are taking and your personal travel style, but this is how we packed. We'll each be traveling with a total of about 35 pounds of clothes and gear between our carry on luggage and our small day bags. This definitely does not qualify as traveling light, but we balanced many factors including how often we thought we would have to carry the bag on our back versus being able to wheel it around, how often we'd need to do laundry and how many times we'd be willing to wear the same item in a row.

Choosing the clothing we were going to bring took almost as long as planning our destinations. Okay maybe that’s because Melissa likes to shop, but it is difficult to choose clothes you have to wear for an entire year. We used as many items from our closet as we could, but we did decide to buy a fair amount specifically for the trip. Packing into a carry-on suitcase and only bringing a few outfits means we’re going to need to do laundry in our hotel room and so we needed to make sure key items will dry overnight. Also, as many other blogs pointed out, comfort needs to take precedence over style since we'd be wearing the clothes all day and sometimes more if we decided to travel on overnight buses or ferries, and many of our regular clothes did not fit the bill. We also didn't worry about bringing clothes for 100% of the situations we're going to encounter. We can always buy and toss clothes along the way.

I’m just going to tell you up front we brought a lot of electronics. I guess we fit into the category of 'flashpackers' who can't leave home without their electronics. I mean with so much free wi-fi, why would you? But really, whether or not you choose to bring a lot of electronic gear completely depends on your personal travel style.

Here are the pros and cons of electronic gear as we see them. Pros: You can easily keep in touch with your family and friends, you can easily check for and book cheap travel arrangements, if you plan to do work on the road you can easily do so, and you'll have fewer arguments with your techie husband over who gets to use the computer. Cons: You worry about them being stolen, it adds more weight to your bags and you might spend more time squirreled away in your room on your computer than out exploring. At the very least you'll probably want to bring a good camera, a netbook (or other thin, light laptop) and an unlocked phone that works on a GSM network. If you don't want to risk damaging your phone by jail breaking and unlocking it, unlocked cell phones are easy to come by overseas. You could also wait to embark on your trip before deciding what items you'll actually need, but most consumer electronics are significantly more expensive in countries other than the US.

Here is what we decided to bring:

13” Macbook Pro (with upgraded 600GB hard drive)

11” Macbook Air

Kindle

iPhones (2)

Canon Rebel T1i (dSLR) with two lenses and accessories

Point and shoot camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5k

Data and picture back up: 1 Terabyte Portable Hard Drive

Data backup via BackBlaze and Picassa

Miscellaneous Gear

First aid kit

Prescriptions from travel clinic (antibiotics, antimalarials, etc)

Hanging toiletry bag: contents also to numerous to mention and vary by person

Inflatable neck pillow

Clothes line

Laundry soap (Zote)

Sink plug

Stuff sack for dirty clothes

Compression sacks

Travel guide (for next destination only)

Phrase/language guide (for next destination only)

Notebook and pen

Luggage locks and padlocks

Ziplock bags

Travel size sewing kit

Sleeping sack

Swim googles

Metal water bottles

Ear plugs

Deck of cards

For a more detailed version of our packing list and the method to our madness, check out our Travel Gear page.